The following are all true stories. You have been warned.
April Fool's Day. It used to be one of those awesome "holidays" that isn't actually a holiday, but probably should be because it's super-fun, because basically you get to spend all day lying to people with no real repercussions and then laugh at them when you yell "April Fools!" because they forgot it was the 1st.
Well, my best friend is, at least in my opinion, the Goddess of April Fools-ing. Perhaps she has some repressed tendency for pathologically lying, but more likely it's because she is completely bad-ass and effing hilarious. I'll never forget how badly she fooled me in the 6th grade...
The phone rings just before 7am. My mom answers and says it's for me. Being unaccustomed to getting phone calls before 7am on a school morning, I can't imagine who it could be (you see this was before caller ID -- yes, I'm old). As it turns out, it's my BFF so I figured she was calling to tell me they were running late for the carpool or something. This is of course, prior to my discovery of the life-juice known as coffee (a dependance on which I will probably write a post about in the future), so I was still groggy and I was 12 so I didn't see the need to take note of the date before I was required to write it on some assignment at school, probably a spelling test or a math quiz on long division or maybe algebra, I don't remember, but that I was bound to fail. Anyway...
"Guess what?!" BFF says, excitedly.
"What?!" I reply, also excitedly, just because she sounds excited.
"School's been cancelled!"
"What? Why?!"
"The water main broke and the school is flooded!" (Not having a terribly comprehensive grasp of plumbing infrastructure in the 6th grade, I had no idea what a water main was, but I understood perfectly the phrase "the school is flooded.")
"Really?! That's awesome! You wanna come over?!" I respond, positively shaking with glee.
Reeling with the potential possibilities that stem from a cancelled school day, I hardly noticed the complete lack of enthusiasm or the barely-audible sniggering coming from the other end of the line. Suddenly, in the middle of a fantasy involving me, BFF, Trolls, ice cream and my trampoline, I hear "April Fool's!" come bellowing through the phone.
Heartbroken. Dreams shattered. Utter humiliation at my own willingness to believe school could actually be cancelled. I'm pretty sure I turned about 30 different shades of red. "Hahaha," I choked out, trying to conceal my embarrassment. "You got me good!" (Yes, at that point in my life, I hated grammar and I'm pretty sure I said things like "you got me good," just to spite my incompetent, asshole of an English teacher. Fortunately, I learned the value of using proper grammar soon after and became a grammar Nazi; because extremes are fun!) "OK, see you in a few," I say. Grateful to get off the phone and wallow in my own shame in private, I hung up immediately only to find my mother still standing in the kitchen having overheard the whole affair, also sniggering.
BFF & April Fool's Day Humiliation: 1
Andie: 0
Believe it or not, my kick-ass AFD-goddess of a best friend got me a SECOND time that same day. Ridiculous, I know. Well, I had just found at a few weeks earlier, that BFF and her family were moving to England in the fall for a year. Being the melodramatic twelve year-old that I was, naturally, I thought the world as I knew it was coming to and end. (Never mind that we had already been BFFs for 6 years at that point, so a year apart couldn't be that bad -- No, I still believed the apocalypse of best friend-dom was headed straight for me.) Just after band rehearsal, she says to me, "So, it turns out we're going to have to live in England for two years."
"What?! No!," I manage to sputter. "Why?!" (I'm pretty sure, at that point, my face went from jolly, red-headed 6th-grader to ashen, on-the-verge-of-tears 6th-grader in about 3 nanoseconds.)
"April Fool's!" she blurts out quickly, probably afraid I was going to melt into a puddle of hysteria at any second, and then her best friend would be a puddle in a bucket she would have to carry around whenever we wanted to hang out. But she still managed an enormous grin because, seriously?! Twice in one day?!
BFF/April Fool's: 2
Andie: -1 (I get negative points for being completely ridiculous, or maybe because I left the friendly-fire function on and accidentally killed a teammate. Wow, I have no idea where that came from or where video game references fit into this story, 'cause they don't.)
So anyway, over the years, I have grown wise with concern to April 1st and almost always take special note of it's recurrence. To this day, I still expect a phone call from BFF and am often prepared for her tomfoolery. Although, I have occasionally been negligent in my preparedness and am still duped by her from time to time.
Anyway, the point is, BFF: AFD Goddess. Me: AFD minion. The other point to this unnecessarily long, but hopefully humorous back-story is -- this year I had the worst April Fool's Day failures/humiliations of my life. None of which actually had to do with gullibility or obliviousness of the passage of time, but merely the fact that I had about 5 major life-fails in one day. On a Friday. And Friday was April Fool's Day. So I'm blaming it for my personal suckiness at life.
April 1, 2011
Life-Fail #1: Cashing a Check
Well, I had this check I'd been needing to deposit for about a month. Even though I walk past the bank every morning on my way to work, I still hadn't managed to remember to deposit that check. One of my co-workers had stopped by my desk to say good morning and mentioned she was going to run some errands; to which I responded that I too needed to go to the bank, so I would walk with her (our errands were on the same street).
I make it to the bank and, in the interest of expedience, decide I'll just use the ATM to deposit my check. I attempt to deposit my check. The ATM proceeds to take it's sweet time and rejects my check, at which point I realize I had forgotten to endorse it and apparently ATMs have eyes (or, you know, cameras) that can detect that kind of flaw. Also, at this point, there is now someone waiting behind me and I don't have pen on me so I can't just sign it and start over because she's standing there, waiting. So, succumbing to social pressures, like being the person who holds up the line, I decide to just deposit the check at the teller's counter. I endorse the check and walk to the counter. Again, I realize too late, that I forgot to fill out a deposit slip. As I mumble something about the deposit slip and start to walk away to get one, the exceptionally friendly teller (whom I recognize and I'm pretty sure recognizes me) says, "Oh, It's OK, I've got one!" She then goes through the trouble of filling out my deposit slip for me and asks if I would like any cash back.
I am now so incredibly flustered, and she's so nice and helpful, which just throws me off even more because usually people aren't nice to incompetent morons who forget something as simple as filling out a deposit slip at the bank, that I forgot I actually wanted to cash the check in the first place (which doesn't require a deposit slip). "Actually, can I just cash that whole thing?" I ask sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot," I say trying to recover just one ounce of my dignity.
"Sure!" she says, in her same cheerful tone, as if my level of stupidity is something she encounters daily (which she probably does) and finds adorable, or at least entertaining. To make matters worse (for me anyway) she has maintained a very cheerful conversation with me about how she likes my phone case and is it OK if she looks at it, while simultaneously doing her job. Her multi-tasking skills of talking and using her computer at the same time, make me look like even more of a buffoon for not being able to use the ATM in the first place. She hands me my cash and wishes me a good day. I thank her, wishing her the same, and trying to convey in my smile that I'm not half as stupid as I just made myself look and please don't judge me for being so inept at such a simple task. (Why is the bank so tragically difficult for some of us?!)
Life-Fail #2: Ordering a Bagel
On the way back from the bank I walked past Einstein Brother's Bagels and decided that a cranberry bagel and some Vanilla Hazelnut coffee would be a good way to assuage my distress about failing miserably at cashing a check.
I walk in and the line stretches from here to Guadalajara, but deciding to be confident in my decision-making (something else I usually fail at) and accurately gauging my need for coffee, I decided to wait. I finally get up to the counter and order my cranberry bagel with reduced-fat shmear. That's when it all went horribly wrong. I should have just ignored my nagging obsession with calories and gone with the full-on-fat cream cheese.
"25% or 50%?" The nice cashier asks.
I start to answer "25%," but then trail off... "Is it 25% reduced or 25% fat?" I ask. At which point I realize I'm probably over-thinking my cream cheese order.
"It's 25% schmarbledegarb," she says. I completely missed what she said and again, succumbing to the people-in-line-boring-a-hole-in-the-back-of-my-head-with-their-hurry-the-fuck-up stares, I mumble, "50%," because that one works out the same either way and I decide it's easiest. But she stares at me blankly and I stare blankly back. Another 10, hole-boring, seconds go by before she says she didn't catch that.
"50%," I say loudly, trying to sound confident.
"OK, would you like that toasted?"
"Yes, please." I enunciate clearly, so as to avoid further confusion and more holes in the back of my head.
"OK, what's your name?"
"Andrea," I say thinking, 'Oh, sweet Jesus, now she knows my name and next time I come in, I'll be that mumbler-girl who doesn't understand the mathematics of reduced-fat cream cheese. (OK, in all likelihood she won't remember me, but I wasn't thinking rationally at the time.)
I pay, I get my bagel and I leave, praying I can just get back to my desk before I manage to suck any more today. Well, not that it mattered...
Life-Fails #3 & #4: Work
Now, I don't remember what happened exactly for these events to warrant the titles Life-Fails #3 & #4, but I remember mentioning to my lab-mates how I was failing at life that day and that two more work-related events were being added to the list. AND I remember them being such trivial functions of my job that they definitely classified as life-failures.
So, finally we get to Life-Fail #5: Babysitting
Now, I've been babysitting children of all ages for close to 15 years and, not to blow my own horn, but I'm pretty damn good at it. I can always calm down crying children, break up vicious bouts of sibling rivalry gone awry and can nearly always vanquish monsters from closets to ensure a safe sleeping environment. Last night however, you guessed it, I had a major babysitting fail.
I was babysitting two adorable kids, ages 9 and 5, that I'd babysat once before, over a year ago. We were having a good time and they were warming up to me nicely. When it was time to go to bed, they were very obedient; they brushed their teeth and got in their pyjamas and we read some bedtime stories. First we read a story about a pig-princess, a douch-y pig-prince, a pig-pizza-deliver-boy, and a pea, the title of which has escaped me. It was cute enough, but had an incessant amount of alliteration using the letter 'P' (surprising, right?!) Then we read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was totally stoked and tried to convey my enthusiasm about good ol' HP to the kids through my reading-voice. That's probably where the failure began. Now, there are some things in life that I should probably never forget. Things like - I am NOT a voice actor, no matter how hard I try or want to be one. At any rate, I thought I did a pretty good job of portraying the tone and events of the book.
We finished a chapter, so I decided that was an appropriate stopping point and it was time for them to go to sleep anyway. They got under the covers, I left the perfect combination of lights on and went into the other room to read -- in order to check on them easily, should the need arise. Twenty minutes of sheet-rustling and whispering later, the oldest came in and told me that the little one wanted their mom to come home to help his little sister fall sleep. Diplomatically, I tried to convince her that she didn't need her mom because she was a big girl (which usually works with five-year-olds) and if she wanted, I could help her fall asleep. But being an adorable, a fore-mentioned five-year-old and me a stranger, she didn't believe in my sleep-inducing abilities.
"No, thanks," she said, politely. "Can you call Mommy?"
"Sure," I say, smiling sweetly, trying not to look distressed. (Luckily, Mom and Dad were at a party across the street, so it wasn't a huge deal for them to come back home.) So I called, Dad came back and put the kids to sleep, no problem. No harm, no foul (except to my babysitting-prowess pride).
"I'm so sorry I had to call you away," I said, trying to not look too sheepish.
"No! It's no problem at all!" he said, adding kindly, that they were so excited I was there that they couldn't fall sleep. Well, after Dad went back to the party, things went swimmingly (big surprise, right -- the kids were asleep).
I would like to point out at this juncture (as a matter of my wounded pride) that, not once in 15 years have I had to call the parents to come home and now that I'm an adult (with a lot of child-care experience) and not some teenager (with absolutely no child-care experience) it makes it that much more embarrassing.
Well, anyway, now you can see why (albeit coincidentally) my April Fool's Day was full of fail and suck and why AFD may never have the same shimmer it once did -- although it clearly holds the same degree of, if not more, humiliation-inducing power than ever.
April Fool's Day Humiliation (and probably BFF by association): 5 trillion
Andie: at least -5 (but probably more).
